


The Prisoner

by Marie_L



Series: Angelo's family [3]
Category: The Pretender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, Clones, Gen, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Science Experiments, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sydney is assigned to the Gemini project six months before the events of "Donoterase."<br/>Although the story follows the timeline of the Wallace family AU, it functions as a stand-alone. Familiarity with the other stories is not required.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Harry Harlow's Human Pet

Sydney tried to skim through the pile of sim transcriptions on the ride to Donoterase, but he couldn't concentrate. It was too much like a cattle car. He had never actually been on any of the infamous death trains as a child, but the archetypal experience was seared into his consciousness nonetheless. He, his hastily packaged luggage and twenty other people were crammed in the back of a small semi, completely windowless, with only one small light above them to see by. They were part of a procession of three trucks that had left the Centre's north loading dock at a gloomy five in the morning, Sunday, November 22, 1998. Two carrying personnel, one supplies. The weekly supply run he was told. They were bringing in turkeys special for Thanksgiving, according to the people he heard chatting while boarding up. There would be nothing else in or out of Donoterase for following seven days, unless Raines decided to pay a visit.

Plenty of the other occupants of the truck gave Sydney curious glances, but no one spoke after the doors slammed shut. Perhaps it was tradition, perhaps they were unsure of who he was and what he was doing mixed in with the regular employees. Sydney considered breaking the silence and pumping them for information, but the discipline of the staff spoke volumes about how the place was run, and he decided to save it for Hansen.

He doubled up on his efforts to read the simulations, a thick sheaf of which he had been handed back on the dock by a bleary Tower intern. Besides the one on the Wallace girl, these were his only clues to the mindset of the child he was about to meet. Assuming he was a child, that is. Sydney had first heard rumors of the Gemini project all the way back before Catherine Parker's death, so in theory the clone could be as old as his late twenties by now. Somehow Sydney doubted it, though. He had bluffed and muscled his way through a dozen pompous high level meetings to get himself assigned to this project, insinuating that he knew much more than he did, but in the final confrontation with Raines the sickly old man had simply referred to the child as "the boy." Obviously he wasn't a very young boy, judging by the contents of the sims. Jarod had been at least eight by the time he could handle topics of that complexity.

After 35 interminable minutes the vehicles rolled to a stop, dangerously close together from the sound of it. Then the truck suddenly jerked down, and Sydney realized they were on some sort of giant elevator. Donoterase was underground. Besides the specially-selected sweepers assigned as drivers -- who knew nothing about what was going on down there -- supposedly only four people were aware of the actual location of the facility: Mr. Parker, Raines, Lyle, and Aaron Hansen, lead geneticist and operations manager. Everyone else was kept in this claustrophobic darkness, no matter how many years they had worked there. Sydney idly wondered what happened to the people that built the place, then decided he didn't want to know.

At a buzzing signal the staff popped open the truck doors and clambered out to have a stretch. There was a massive cluster of activity, as the supply truck was unloaded, refuse piled in, and the outgoing weekly shift clustered around the incoming, urgently discussing all matters of continuity between the weeks.

"Yeah, Bertha's been throwing up again. BRAT diet and psyllium for at least the next five days."

"Air circulation unit 405 broke down again. Tweaking didn't work this time, replacement fan should be on the truck."

"Your transcription experiment was a complete bust, Mac. Crash and burn, total mess of a result. Left a couple of ideas in the notebook."

"You at least did the damn dishes, I hope? My room had better not be a disgusting mess this week."

Sydney waited patiently on the sidelines, observing all the interactions. At last the tall aquiline-faced man arrived to fetch him. Sydney had met Hansen two days ago at the second-to-last meeting, and liked the man. He seemed guarded but also had the air of smooth confidence of someone with both competence and authority. Sydney had the distinct impression at the meeting that Hansen himself had requested the job interview, to personally screen him for entrance to Donoterase. The two of them were the only ones in the loading bay wearing button-collared shirts and slacks.

"Sydney. So glad you could make it on this week's transport. We've informed Gemini that there were going to be changes to his project, but haven't told him the details yet. You can do the honors."

Sydney glanced around at this casual dropping of the ultra-secret Gemini project's name, but no one around him batted an eye. "Does everyone here know about him?"

"Of course. There are only 87 people who work at Donoterase over both the red and blue shifts, now counting you. And many of them were involved in his project ... before he was born. They do not know your half of things of course."

"Does the boy know what he is?"

Hansen paused at that, longer than Sydney would have anticipated for simple yes or no question. "Raines has standing orders that he is not be informed. And he's never asked me or anyone else, so far as I know. Raines told him his parents were killed when he was a baby."

 _He didn't answer the question,_ thought Sydney. Hansen clearly suspected the boy had an inkling of where he came from.

"Come on, let's get your things to your room and you can meet him." He picked up one of Sydney's weighty suitcases and bade him to follow. They wandered through a gray concrete maze of hallways, following several others also heading to their quarters. Sydney's room was tiny and utilitarian, barely 8 x 10 and containing only a bed, desk, chair, and an empty bookcase. At least it was a private space, apparently without cameras.

They walked through down around the corner to reach Gemini's room. His was on the same wing as the rest of the staff quarters. There didn't seem to be a lock on the door, Sydney was surprised to note. In fact there were precious few locks to seen at all so far. Perhaps locking them all in the building for the week was considered to be security enough.

They entered the room without knocking, and there was a teenage Jarod, sitting at a desk by a large pile of books, dressed and ready for the day despite the fact that it was not yet six am. Or so it seemed to Sydney, who had to stop to recover his composure for an instant before proceeding. The boy looked _exactly_ the way Jarod had circa 72' or 73', just prior to his big adolescent growth spurt. Like a ghost from a DSA, rebirthed in full technicolor.

The boy jumped up at their arrival and nervously wiped his hands on his pants, but deferentially did not speak. Sydney stepped forward to fill the void.

"Hello, my name is Sydney. I'll be taking care of you for a little while." He extended his hand.

"It is nice to meet you, Dr. Sydney," the boy stiffly responded. His voice was very soft. Again, the sound was like a memory jumping out the brain into the present.

Syd shook his head. "Just 'Sydney' is fine. And what is your name?"

The boy's eyes shifted to Hansen, widening in what could have been fear. "My project name is Gemini, Doc ... Sydney, sir."

"Is that what they call you around here?"

Again the boy glanced at Hansen for some kind of permission. Out of the corner of his eye Sydney saw him give a tiny nod yes. "People sometimes call me James now."

Sydney didn't press what was before the "now." "Is that what you prefer to be called?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well, then, James it is. Did anyone tell you why I am here, James?"

"Not exactly. Are you working for Mr. Raines?"

"Not exactly," Sydney repeated, and smiled. The boy did not smile in return. He looked as if he was still trying to get a grasp of the situation, figure out how much he could say or ask, perhaps Pretend Sydney himself a bit to to predict the appropriate response. He had seen that act before on many occasions, although even as a child Jarod had vastly less anxiety about it. "I do not work directly for Raines, although I do report to the Tower. I will be directing your project day-to-day from now on."

"So Mr. Raines isn't going to come any more to have me perform simulations?"

"He might drop by on occasion to observe, but I will be running the simulations."

Hansen cleared his throat and broke in. "I have some things to do related to the shift change. James, can you give Sydney a tour, then drop him off at my office? We have some things to discuss." Sydney was surprised by the request, and so was the young man. It was a signal to them both: James had evidently been allowed to roam Donoterase, and Hansen didn't mind that Sydney knew that fact.

They walked together down the hall away from the personal quarters. Sydney sensed that James wanted to ask more questions, but was unsure how far to push things. It might take awhile, to gain his trust after being under the likely capricious care of Raines for so many years. So Sydney asked him for mundane details about Donoterase instead, to get him talking and put him at ease.

It soon became apparent that James was intimately aware of everyone and everything going on at the facility. The building was huge, given the small number of people working there. They had about twenty working labs, each equipped with a bewildering array of machines that rolled off James' tongue: Polymerase chain reaction, microarray, oligonucleotide synthesizer, micromanipulator. There were more than thirty animal rooms, half currently filled with chickens, five rat, five mouse, one with rhesus monkeys. A veterinary clinic room. Necropsy. Pathology. A cold room full of Cray supercomputers. Maintenance facilities. Walk-in freezer. Offices. An office converted into a library and reading room. A large communal kitchen and dining area. A rec room with a pool table and board games. An arboretum, which judging by the smell was maintained using chicken manure from the animal rooms. Six more cavernous spaces filled with bright lights and plant seedlings. Exersize room, so the scientists had their own rodent wheel to run on. The sim lab, much smaller than the one back at Blue Cove. Security room, with all camera footage from the labs and hallways.

The latter, of course, wasn't just to keep intruders out. It was to keep everyone else in.

Everywhere they went they encountered the scientists and technicians starting their day and work week. To a person they smiled at James and waved, and he gave them beauteous full-dimpled grins back. Clearly he was beloved by the staff. As they went through everything, Sydney stopped analyzing every move James was making, and listened to the content of his narration. He could see why Hansen hedged on the cloning question. The kid absolutely knew enough to put two and two together, were he emotionally primed for it.

"So here's our one monkey room at the moment. We used to have a lot more but the last macaque project finished a few years ago, they're only monitoring a few animals for the long-term now. Those two fat ones are Bertha and her daughter Sadie. Sadie was the second primate clone produced from differentiated adult cells. There were two others but they've already been sent to necropsy. Sometimes I just sit in here and watch them, although they don't like being stared at. They like peanuts. Do you have a recent TB test? You have to have a negative PPD within the past six months to go into the monkey room."

"I found out I was assigned here somewhat last minute, so I do not have a recent PPD. But I'm fine skipping the monkey introductions."

James tipped his head, considering. A delicate question was coming, Sydney was sure. He had warmed up on the tour, encouraged by Sydney's lack of rebuke and open interest in him. The young man's personality still seemed to be reticent and repressed, so very different from Jarod's confidence and frequent emotional outbursts at that age. But Syd was sure that insatiable curiosity was bubbling below the surface, just like Jarod. "How did you get assigned to me? We don't get many new people in here. Was Mr. Raines disappointed in something I did?" The latter possibility seemed to terrify him.

"No. I heard nothing but boasts from Raines about your abilities. But I have worked with some gifted young people in the past, and I was sent both to assess you and guide you to the next level."

"Are we going to do a sim today?"

"I need to speak with Hansen and review your history. Perhaps tomorrow. What have you been working on while Raines has been gone?"

James shrugged. "He didn't leave me anything specific to study this time, so I've been helping Dr. Terry from blue week with his genomics stats. And Miss Mac needs some help with her triticum transcription study. Stuff like that."

"I see. Well let's finish the tour, then you can drop me off at Hansen's and go eat. It must be time for your morning supplement by now. You can do whatever you usually do for today, and we'll see about giving you a more focused project by tomorrow."

The boy lowered his eyes in submission and pointed at the contents of the next room.

 

******

 

Half an hour later over in Hansen's office, Sydney settled into a chair.

"So, was your tour informative?"

"Very. You've turned the boy into quite the little scientist. Did Raines know about that?"

"Of course not. Raines' orders were for James to be locked in his room 24/7, studying nothing but sims and the bare walls. If we had done it his way the child would be a gibbering autistic rocking in a corner. But this is _my_ facility, and when Raines isn't here things go as I say, so instead James has turned into a delightful young man."

"Why do you call him James?"

"Ah, well, calling him Gemini is a little indiscreet, isn't it? Even amongst ourselves. The staff called him Jim for a long time, short for Gemini. Raines found out about it a couple of years ago and pitched a fit, so I changed it to James, on pain of immediately firing if anybody slipped up in front of our delightful bald friend."

"And do you still consider yourself to have ultimate authority over him, now that I am here as project coordinator?"

"Obviously you will have unlimited access to his time, and the sim lab, and have all the resources you need to run your simulations. I will not interfere with the Pretender project. But unlike Raines, you live here now, under my auspices just as James does. That means both of you live by Donoterase rules. And in fact, I have some bad news on that front."

Sydney crossed his arms and smiled. Direct confrontation. How refreshing. "Go ahead."

"The Tower has directed me to inform you that they expect your absolute dedication to this project. As such, you are to stay at Donoterase with Gemini until such time as the project is moved to another location. If you leave Donoterase at any time for any reason, your participation in this project will be terminated."

"I see." Bad news indeed. "So they decided to only tell me this _after_ I arrived here?"

"Well. It _is_ the Centre. Never be honest when a good hard manipulation will do."

"I have some books and other materials at my home and office back at the Centre that I may need."

Hansen waved his hand like it was a trifle. "Send me a list of what you want and I will have it sent on the next transport. Any books or other resources you need for James too, the boy's mind is like a sponge. They're taking care of your house and bills so you don't need to worry about that."

"Good thing I don't have a family or any pets."

His counterpart snorted. "No one at Donoterase has family or pets. Welcome to _our_ family, Sydney."

And Syd knew with sinking certainty that, every bit as much as Jarod's young doppelganger, he too was now a prisoner.

 

******

 

As a consolation prize for the bad news, Hansen had sent him off with the complete DSA record of Gemini's life. Sydney plopped down at his desk in his new spartan home, intending to start at the end, the most recent sims, to get a better picture of the boy's current capabilities. Soon though the allure of the formative years called to the psychiatrist in him, and he popped in the earliest disk.

Jarod had only been four years old when Sydney first met him, but he already arrived with full language capabilities and a strong intact personality. So it was both strange and fascinating to go back in time before that, to a squalling red-faced blank slate of a human. The tapes didn't show the surrogate who birthed him, but they started soon after with a tiny newborn with mesmerizing black eyes. And from what Sydney remembered of infant behavior, James was unusual from the start. For one thing he only slept half as much time as a newborn should, perhaps eight or nine hours per day. Jarod had sleep problems from early boyhood, which Sydney had assumed was an unconscious side effect of the stress of doing sims and living in confinement. But perhaps his brain had been wired strangely for sleep from the beginning, as some unusual correlate of his genius abilities.

Those additional waking hours were not spent crying or fussing, but observing the world through those wide luscious eyes. And most astonishing of all, there actually was something to look at. Sydney was sure that Raines would demand an ascetic, isolated, possibly even abusive environment for the child. That wasn't at all what the tapes showed however. Instead he found a strangely regimented social program, designed for Gemini to develop a fully integrated personality while preventing too much attachment to any one person.

From birth to age three, Raines was hardly ever present in the boy's life. Instead there was a constant stream of caregivers, all young females, three at any given time. They appeared to be fired and replaced at random intervals every few months, so James would not grow overly fond of any one of them. Instead he had an attachment object that was constant through all the caregiver changes, a soft yellow bear that became increasingly ragged and filthy as the years progressed.

The caregivers kept a strict schedule. From birth to age one, he was within arms reach of one of the young women at all times, lugged around most of the day in a series of slings. For exactly four hours per day at least one caregiver spoke to the boy, alone. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the speech, just something. Some of them read, some of them sang songs, some simply babbled in his presence. When his first words began at six months, they riffed on that, interacting as much as possible for the requisite four waking hours. For another three hours per day the caregivers spoke even more, but _with each other_ while he played or hung on them or was fed. The conversations were as banal as one would expect from people trapped in a underground bunker for weeks on end, but it was the social interaction that mattered.

Someone had clearly been reading the latest research of language development, noting the necessity of live people interacting to model it. And Harlow's infamous monkey studies as well, which had demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that touch, movement and attachment to something tactile, even if only a stuffed animal, was required for normal psychological development in primates. In fact the whole situation reeked of the output of a simulation. Since even Raines wasn't stupid enough to have Jarod run a sim on How to Raise a Sane Human in Captivity, someone else must have done it. Kyle, Sydney guessed.

By age one James was speaking in multi-word sentences, and the regime changed. He was made to sleep on his own at night, although caregivers were still constantly there during the day and responsive at night if he was upset. The free speech was reduced to two hours, the time replaced by tutoring to work on his fine and gross motor skills and symbol recognition. By age two he could read and speak in long compound sentences, and was working on the hand-eye coordination for writing. At two the routine was altered again, with caretakers now withdrawn at night no matter how much he cried, and he was left with some independent time alone during the day to read and play as well. The tutoring increased to five hours a day. But the bear was his constant companion through it all.

Then at age three the regime changed yet again, and his world fell out from underneath him.

At each of what Sydney presumed was his birthdays, James was sedated for a series of biopsies and other medical tests. Naturally the next day he woke up from this cranky and sore, and at three was not in the mood for the ubiquitous tutoring now taking over his existence. It was at this fragile moment that Raines decided to make dramatic entrance into the boy's life.

James was literally backtalking the tutor, who had been trying to get him to do a writing assignment for the previous hour. He had an expression that Sydney wryly recognized as Classic Jarod Petulance, arms crossed with the bear tucked in his armpit and refusing to even sit down. "No! I won't do it! My arm hurts! The paper is too purple! I need to take a nap! You can't make me!"

Raines and a sweeper burst in at that moment, the sweeper lifting the little boy up on top of a table so they were closer to eye contact. James looked at Raines with alarm, but still had his arms crossed in defiance.

"I am Mr. Raines. Do you remember me?" The boy nodded. "I will be directly supervising your education from now on. He is fired." Raines gestured toward the astonished tutor, who was unceremoniously picked up and shoved out the door by the sweeper.

"Your behavior is completely unacceptable. You will sit down, you will do the task assigned to you to the best of your abilities, and you will not complain. If you fail to obey me, there will be consequences." He plucked the bear out of his arms, and in an action that was clearly premeditated, pulled some scissors out of his pocket and chopped off a leg.

Gemini began to shriek at the very top of his lungs. Raines grabbed his shirt and struck him clean across the face, then dangled the mutilated bear in front of the sobbing boy's eyes. "Get control of yourself. Now. I don't want to hear you cry, ever." He managed to suck it in, lower lip still quivering. The sweeper placed him back on the floor and pointed at the table where the writing assignment was still waiting. After he quietly completed it, Raines gave him back the three-limbed stuffed animal.

Sydney began to skip ahead at that point, so he missed some of the key incidents. But the bear was whittled down little by little, and Gemini's emotions were whittled down with it. He withdrew within himself, didn't smile, didn't fuss, just tried to do everything put in front of him with steely determination. By the time the head of the bear went, around age six, it wasn't even for crying. He never cried anymore, at least in front of others. It was for failing to perform a simulation to Raines' satisfaction. After that Sydney saw no sign of the bear again, although he would bet good money that James still had a piece of it he kept with him, even right on down to today.

Throughout all of these early years there was very little sign of Hansen or any of the other activities going on at Donoterase, although sometimes things could be heard in the background. When James was a baby there was clear evidence of another child, often heard wailing in the background. The crying stopped by the time he was two. Sydney thought of the three rhesus monkey clones, and how two of them had "already been sent to necropsy." The attempts, and the failures.

Raines started Gemini on simple simulations when he was five, and here another major problem cropped up, a direct consequence of the old man's severe authoritarian repression in Sydney's opinion. Gemini was very good at simulations which were essentially physics or engineering problems. He arrived at the solutions fluidly, without diversion. But add in any sort of human emotion to the scenario and the boy was hopeless. The incident which resulted in the bear's beheading was the penultimate example. The scenario involved a mother having to choose between saving the life of her child and her pet. A simple one to solve, but James just couldn't get at the heart of the problem without memorizing the correct answer. And how indeed is a child raised underneath the world supposed to understand the motivations of his fellow human beings? Raines apparently gave up on the boy in disgust for a short time, disappearing from the DSAs for about six weeks.

Then, upon Raines' return, Gemini suddenly _was_ able to get it. His performance on the emotional sims improved dramatically, to Raines' leering approval. Sydney had to rewind and take a look at those six weeks to determine what on earth happened. There was nothing in his daily tutoring that would provoke such a massive change in cognition. Then he realized what was missing from all the disks he had reviewed: Night footage, when James was supposedly asleep. Which, if Jarod's lifelong sleep habits was any indication, often didn't involve sleep at all.

Sydney got up to stretch and take walk. It was four in the afternoon, only a couple of hours before dinner, but he wanted to solve this one mystery for the day. He stopped at the security office and demanded the footage, without bothering to ask if it existed. He knew it did. The Centre kept every scrap somewhere. The sweeper scowled at him but dug into a locked closet for the filed-away disk from the designated time period.

Back in his room Sydney played the disk, and indeed within two days of Raines leaving his training he saw the telltale pinpoint light indicating James was surreptitiously reading something in his dark room at night. It took a half hour of zooming in and freeze framing for Syd to figure out what it was. "ddlemar" was finally decipherable. Middlemarch. Someone was feeding him fine literature to educate him about human behavior. A genius idea itself.

Through the six weeks and even after Raines' return, he devoured dozens of books. Dickens. Dostoyevsky. Austen. Tolstoy. Twain. Some modern ones, too: Hemingway, Woolf, Morrison, Marquez, Rushdie. The late night reading continued through the end of the DSA. It could still be going on today. Perhaps if he gained enough trust, Sydney could ask him about it one day.

At six in the evening Sydney stopped his examinations for the day and went down to dinner. Here, too he was able to observe James in a way Raines likely never had. This one meal a day was served communally, with everyone present. With Raines absent, Hansen clearly wasn't enforcing the nutritional supplement protocol, for James ate spaghetti and salad and garlic bread with the rest of them. After eating the young man ran around talking to everyone, helping them out with problems they encountered during the day, happy in a way never visible with Raines or doing a sim.

These people were his family, Sydney realized. A family that in the not-too distant future would be taken away. For Sydney had no intention of living at Donoterase for years on end. The Centre had tied his hands, so the only way out now was through the front door. To get them both out he was going to have to convince them that Gemini could take Jarod's place in Blue Cove.

There were plenty more DSAs to go through, to get from that terrified six-year-old illicitly reading George Eliot under his covers to the thoughtful fourteen-year-old with a modicum of freedom in front of him. But Sydney was done with recordings. Time to get to know the boy himself. Simulations would commence tomorrow.


	2. "Who that cares to know the history of man ..."

James sat on the metal step stool in his lab coat and latex gloves, trying to bribe Bertha to the top of her cage. She was obese, she needed exercise, but despite living in a great multilevel cage she never climbed to the top except for a peanut. Unfortunately she and Sadie were prescribed a bland diet by Dr. Letty right now, so all he could offer was a bit of banana. All that did was annoy her, and she gaped and shook the cage, her deep purple flicking with extra black. More black every day, she was getting more sick. Sadie was her normal violet with gray, and despite the fact that she too wasn't exactly svelte she dashed to the top and stole the banana. Bertha didn't like that either, and she gaped at the both of them, conspiring against her deserved peanutty goodness.

He liked to come in here, not just to say hello to the animals or even observe their behavior, but sometimes just to think. His brain went around and around sometimes, like a centrifuge with a broken timer, and it could take a long time to slow down without flying out of control. The arboretum was good for that too, but there were often other people in there relaxing too. And the flowers shouted excessive colors, it was distracting when he wanted to be inside his mind.

James started with an addition to his daily diary. Memorized of course. There were tons of notebooks around but the purpose of it was to keep track of time in a way that was easily organized and referenced. He started by mentally picturing the date: _Year eight, week 20, day 1._ The real year was fourteen, he was pretty sure, but he started counting after Sample Day eight years ago so that was the way the diary was organized. A red week, even numbers were red. Naturally the date was red too, a unique shade associated with those numbers. Then he assigned events to the date: _Dr. Sydney arrives, give tour, flood wheat._ Something else might happen later in the day, but odds were that would be it. The events influenced the color of the date, greenish for both wheat seedlings and Dr. Sydney, so the day ended up an earthy brown tone. He filed away the colored date, firmly imprinted in his mind now.

He contemplated Dr. Sydney then, studying what he knew so far. Dr. Sydney was hidden within himself, dark emerald on the outside and fiery orange in the inside, but only tiny sparks of that leaked out. James briefly considered the possibility he may actually be the donor. He pushed aside the colors for a moment and considered his real physical characteristics. Dark brown mostly straight hair, dark brown eyes, dual dimples. Possible. He couldn't tell from facial structure yet, he needed to grow a few more years first. But James was dubious. Dr. Sydney was clearly below Dr. Hansen in the hierarchy, who himself was below Mr. Raines. Surely the donor was above Mr. Raines, otherwise why would they have bothered to clone him? No, the most likely scenario was that he was dead. The arrival of Dr. Sydney did not change the analysis.

The door swung open and Ms. Hilary brought in her cart with one of the transgenic monkeys. Shiny brown, Cliff.

"Oh, hi, James. Aren't you supposed to be with your new teacher?" She attached the transfer box to the cage and Cliff shot in, then his cage mate Norm ran into the box to take his place. Ms. Hilary gave them both a piece of breakfast cereal for following the routine.

"He said I had a free day today. I don't think they gave him much time to look over my work before coming here." Dr. Sydney had mentioned other gifted young people. Where were they, why didn't they live with him at Donoterase? Wouldn't it be easier to train them if they were together? Maybe he was the only young one now.

"So, first impression, do you like him? Cracks the whip less than Raines?"

James tipped his head, analyzing the expression. A whip was a weapon intended to wound, he knew that from _Beloved._ Mr. Raines had never beaten him with a weapon before, so it must be a figure of speech.

"I don't have enough information yet to form an opinion" he hedged, and Ms. Hilary laughed.

"You've got a future in politics, kid." The gray-haired woman left the room with the new monkey for his daily cognitive tests, waving bye.

Politics. That seemed unlikely. You had to live in the world for that. But he had done some political sims, so maybe that was what she meant.

James rubbed his left knee, realizing he needed to stretch and walk. It hurt more with each flip of a week. He knew he should tell Dr. Hansen about it, but they would only order a painful biopsy that could make the inflammation worse. Let them discover it at Sample Day, more than half a year away; put off all their unconscious fretting over the multitude of ways he was not exactly like the donor. Whatever was going wrong was sure to show up on the mRNA probes. The first piece of his body to fail, but certainly not the last.

He jumped off the stool, earning another monkey scowl from Bertha, and tenderly walked the perimeter of the central labs a few laps before heading into Ms. Mac's. The pain diminished to a dull ache with the gentle exercise. Ms. Mac was technically Dr. Rodhi's research associate, but she had worked at Donoterase so long that in effect she was her own investigator. Her real name wasn't Ms. Mac either, it was Gloria MacPherson, but everybody called her "Mac." She was sitting in front of her computer, her colors of deep azure blue with ribbons of neon green floating around her.

James waited for her to speak first, as was respectful. "Hey there sport. I know I said I was going to flood the wheat today, but can I have you look at something first?"

A little flash of disappointment shot through him. If she put off the flooding until tomorrow, he probably wouldn't get to help. But maybe the problem she was working on was interesting too, so he leaned over to squint at the screen. "Is this the rs005698 sequence?"

"Yeah. I'm definitely getting the allele into the damn plant in the right place, but it doesn't work. Zippo on transcription. What the hell's wrong with this sequence? Computer says it should work. Rodhi says it should work. I've stared at it for hours and my brain says it should work. What do _you_ say, Brainiac?"

James pulled himself into a chair to get an even closer look at the monitor. The parade of little **A C G T** 's filled the screen. In reality it was just black and white letters, but in his mind it was a sea of color, layers of information popping out at him. The base pair sequence, then the codons forming their amino acids like little shiny beads on a necklace. Then the amino acids called to one another to form the protein, folding and looping on itself to create a complex three dimensional molecular knot.

It was all very pretty. Except at the beginning, there was a tiny bit of black there in the transcription start sequence. James willed his eyes to focus on that section. It was only one amino acid, one tiny bead in the strand, but it caused a minute wrinkle that would make it difficult for the promoter to latch on. He deleted that bead, and the protein changed before his eyes, the wrinkle springing away from another side of the protein and lying down into a smooth curve. Better.

"It should work now," he said, turning away from the mad colors on the screen to the soothing blue in front of him. She looked both dubious and amazed.

"Seriously? One codon? Three little base pairs will make all the difference, huh?"

"I believe so, yes. Put it in the seeds and see."

She brought up the modeling program and ran the new sequence through it."Well the computer still says it will work. I'll give it a try tonight. How did you know what to change?"

"I don't know, I just read the sequence. Like reading a book. One of the words was wrong."

Ms. Mac shook her head again. "Well that bit of wizardry deserves a little reward, I think. Shall we drown a bunch of baby wheat plants for a fun afternoon?"

They walked over to one of the seedling rooms, where vast patches of three inch grass plants were growing in deep trays on expansive tables. They were trying out over three dozen variations on a gene that was supposed to increase waterlogging resistance in wheat. No one knew which version would work, if any. The two of them ran around the room taking measurements and samples, the "before" condition, then set up the hoses for the flooding.

James sat and watched in fascination as the water rose on the green spears, up up up, smothering the green with tranquil gray water reflected off the walls. Most of the baby plants were going to die in that gray now, but out of that death would rise a new plant, stronger than all of the ones that came before. Unless they got it wrong, and would have to arduously start the process, creation and destruction, all over again.

 

******

 

The next morning James was ready to go in the sim lab at precisely seven am, waiting for his first day with Dr. Sydney. He forced his outer face to be calm, but inside his stomach twisted with nervousness. Dr. Sydney hadn't talked to him again but had watched him all through dinner, observing and probing from across the room. Maybe he should have made himself a supplement drink like Mr. Raines would have wanted, but Dr. Hansen had told him spaghetti was fine.

The way Dr. Sydney had looked at him, James was increasingly sure he had known the donor. Mr. Raines often gave him the same look, although not with any affection. It the look that said they already knew how he was supposed to behave, because they had seen it all before. And nowhere was the pressure to perform to expectations stronger than during a sim. It had been made clear to him in a thousand subtle ways that there was only one correct way to do a simulation, and that was the way the mystery donor had done it. Only he had to pretend that it was his own invention. A pretend of a Pretend. Often these things had devolved into a mental loop, with James expending more effort trying to figure out what the donor would have done than derive the correct answer. And James had calculated it wrong on many, many occasions.

"Hello, James. Come sit down." Dr. Sydney bade him over to the simple desk a chair. James liked his gentle accent. He wondered what part of the world he was from, and whether he would ever be allowed to tell him about it.

"I didn't bring with me the prompts for a full simulation, so we're going to have to make do until the next transport. Here." He pulled out a black and white photograph from an envelope. "Who is he?"

James picked up the photo and brought it close to his face. Without even glancing back at his instructor he recognized the figure as Dr. Sydney as a young man, smiling with dimples, bent over talking to a little girl in a polka dot dress. Only it wasn't Dr. Sydney. The colors were reversed, orange with green specks instead of mostly green.

"It looks like you, but it isn't you," James started slowly. "Your twin brother?"

"Very good. What can you tell me about him?"

Dr. Sydney had a twin just like he did. Only he probably knew his brother. They grew up together. James shook off these irrelevancies and stared at the photo again, trying to extract more information. Orange usually meant a forceful personality, driven, but the green broke it up. "He liked his work. Was obsessed with it. But also conflicted. He loves the little girl, is fascinated by her, but also feels deep guilt towards her."

Dr. Sydney nodded. "Mm-hm. And who is the girl?"

His daughter was the obvious answer, but not the correct one. "His student. She's one of the gifted ones." James hoped he wouldn't ask for many details on the girl, because her colors were not very clear. Most of what he saw was just the photograph, although that contained useful data too.

"Excellent. Here's another one, what can you tell me about her?" This photo, also in black and white, was a beautiful young woman with long straight hair and a headband, beaming at a baby in her arms. This time the child actually was the daughter. Although the woman looked happy in the picture, her colors were a maelstrom, flipping back and forth between dominant yellow and dominant black with complex undertones to both sides.

"She ... she has a mental disorder," James began uncertainly. Dr. Sydney's eyes widened slightly. James couldn't tell if he was on the right track or not, but decided to keep going. "Bipolar, maybe? Sometimes she is happy, creative, full of life. Other times her world is completely black. There are real reasons for her depression, but her mind amplifies them. She lacks control over her destiny, but does her best to take it anyway."

Dr. Sydney moved the two photos so they were next to each other on the desk. "Do they know each other?"

A stab of anxiety went through James. He decided to be honest instead of guessing, and take the consequences. At least he would know how his new teacher liked to punish. "I can't tell, Dr. Sydney. I need more information. I'm sorry." He tried to calm his breathing, prepare for whatever came next. Dr. Sydney seemed disappointed, but that passed quickly.

"They worked together at the same facility. Based on what you know of their personalities, do you think they would form a friendship?" His tone indicated he thought he had to spell it out a little too much, but he didn't seem angry over it.

James waited for the inevitable instruction to act out the scenario, but Dr. Sydney just paused for the answer. So he took a few seconds to think carefully about the question instead. Orange was consumed with his work, but such people tend to be lonely. And yellow had a joyous personality when she wasn't in the black. She would always pull the people around her into her orbit, like the gravitational pull of the sun. "Yes, if they met while she was in a manic phase. Her vitality would attract him."

"Attract? As in a romantic relationship?"

It was the sort of question where it was impossible to know the correct answer. This time James did guess, based on Dr. Sydney's body language. What did he want to hear? "More of a friendship on her side, but he may have been sexually attracted to her. She is very beautiful. But his feelings were not reciprocated."

Dr. Sydney was very difficult to read, but James thought he had hit on the correct answer. The older man considered him, putting his knuckles under his chin. Finally he put away the photos and said, "Very good. Let's do some visualization exercises next."

James internally let out a breath in relief, grateful he had passed the first test. "Dr. Sydney? May I ask a question?"

"Just call me Sydney, James. Of course you can ask anything."

"What happened to the people in the photographs? In the actual past, not a sim."

A brief look of grief flashed over his face, the fiery orange flaring up. Then Dr. Sydney went back to impassive. A mask. "They died. They both died far too young. Now put that aside, James. We need to work on other things."


	3. Every Pigeon Escapes the Skinner Box

Sydney had been at Donoterase only a week when he began to suspect his young charge was faking it.

It was an old philosophical problem, one he and Jacob had argued about constantly near the genesis of the Pretender project: How do you know your subjects _really_ become the person in a simulation? What is the difference between Pretending and merely having an active imagination? So a series of tests were devised for the children, designed to get hard measures of authentic emotions. Anger, jealousy, happiness, grief, affection, surprise, relief, boredom, calm, anxiety: All were elicited in simple scenarios pitting the children against one another, to make it as real as possible to their immature minds. They didn't have imaging techniques such as MRI back then, so a wide variety of physiological responses were measured, including brain wave patterns and skin galvanic responses. Then later on, when the actual simulations began, they could tell if their subjects were genuinely experiencing the same emotions while inside a Pretend.

Sydney knew the baseline scenarios were on the DSA disks Jarod stole, so it was a surprise he had never thrown it back into his old mentor's face. At the time running those experiments had felt like the most unethical thing Sydney had ever done, forcing four and five-year-olds to hate or terrify each other day after day. But then again, if the simulations really were _real_ to Jarod, maybe it was all of a piece to him; just the first in a long string of unpleasant ordeals for his mind to ride out.

There had been one emotion that not even the Centre was willing to impress on preschoolers, though, and that was sexual attraction. Thus the infamous -- even by Centre standards -- experiment in which a barely pubertal Jarod had the equally young Miss Parker dangled in front of him in order to provoke the obvious response. The Centre's controllers also wanted hard evidence of their young genius' heterosexuality, despite the fact that it contradicted the project's goal of their Pretenders becoming "anyone they want to be." Homosexual behavior was still widely condemned as a perversion and psychological pathology then, and there was an obsessive concern that Jarod to be normal, or at least not too abnormal. Sydney had campaigned hard against the whole endeavor on the grounds that it could humiliate Jarod and actually create a sexual complex where none existed before, but he had been overruled and Jarod weathered it just fine. Miss Parker could probably take some credit for that.

In any case, Sydney could find no corresponding baseline data for James, at any point in his life. He gave the young man the day off on Sunday to help the Donoterase staff get ready for the weekly personnel shift, and poured over ten years of DSAs. Nothing. Raines must have just assumed that because Gemini shared the same genome with Jarod, his mind would work like Jarod's as well. But Sydney had mounting clues that wasn't the case at all.

From the beginning James showed a remarkable reluctance to act out a simulation. He would do it when prompted, of course. The boy was slavishly obedient, terrified of doing anything that might find fault or cause offense. But it wasn't his natural mode of doing a sim. Even at the very first assignment, with the photos of Jacob and Catherine, Jarod would have done it differently. By James' age Jarod was sliding into new characters effortlessly. He would have spent thirty seconds or more examining the photos, absorbing both the personality of the figures and all associated clues from the background, possibly asking a few specific questions to reinforce the details. Then he would look up, the new personality embedded, capable of answering questions in the first person from the perspective of the a brand new human being created wholesale in his mind.

James, on the other hand, was tentative at the beginning of every sim. At first Sydney thought he was just fearful of punishment, and given Raines' abusive parental behavior that was still a lingering possibility. But it wasn't just that; he subtly probed for affirmation before committing to a path. The boy was actively cold-reading his handlers, then tailoring his response to _their_ response.

Sydney had to admire the level of genius necessary to survive this long undetected. James knew that certain information had to be extracted from a sim. He knew it was supposed to be done in a predetermined form -- the way a Pretender would do it. He knew he would be punished if he failed to come up with the information in a Pretender-like manner. So he had devised a myriad of strategies to get at the correct answer, and all the rest was acting.

The final simulation Sydney ran on the fifth day clinched the situation in his mind. They had been working on a variety of engineering and physics problems, all of which James performed flawlessly. Then he switched it. The scenario appeared to involve a simple decision-making process of a surgeon, trying to decide between two alternate courses of action on a patient. The real point of the sim, however, was determining how the emotions of the doctor and patient influenced the decision.

"I will perform the Whipple, of course. It is the only course of action that has any chance of prolonging the patient's life."

"That procedure has severe negative side effects, James. Switch to the perspective of the patient. What does he _want_ from treatment?"

James cocked his head staring at Sydney, a now familiar response when he sensed he was going down the wrong track. "He -- I -- I want to be cured. But that is highly unlikely with stage four pancreatic cancer. So barring that I want to live as long as possible. But not with unbearable amounts of suffering. Then I just want the pain to end. So the decision rests on the relative weight of prolonging life versus enjoying what's left of that life."

Sydney nodded, trying not to feed him too many clues. "And the surgeon? How does he feel?"

"His priority is saving the patient's life. He is a scientist, rational. He knows this procedure is the only thing he can do that has a chance of helping the patient. But his priorities may be in conflict with the patient."

"So what happens? Do they do the procedure or not?"

"It depends on the relative strength of their personalities. The surgeon will likely win because he has the force of authority and expertise on his side. So I perform the Whipple, and try and alleviate the suffering from the side effects ..."

Sydney sighed inwardly. Hopeless. The boy could analyze every scenario six ways from Sunday, but he didn't _see_ it from the perspective of the participants. He didn't create their minds in his mind.

He let the relieved young man off for the day, and retired to his room to think about the problem. In truth, as tempting as it was take the long years necessary to teach Gemini how to be a true Pretender, that was no longer Sydney's goal in life. Rather he had one simple task: Get himself and the boy out of this underground prison, to a position where Jarod could retrieve him. Shaping James' mind into a facsimile of Jarod's was not necessarily conducive to that goal.

Making him a better _fake_ Pretender, though, might do just fine.

Sydney resolved then, to do the one thing he and Jacob vowed they would never do. He would lead the boy on, to make it look like his skills were rapidly advancing. The Tower would then be mighty tempted to have Gemini replace Jarod in full glory at the Centre's massive Blue Cove complex. It had been two and a half years since Jarod escaped, and neither recapture nor reindoctrination seemed a realistic possibility. They thought they had a copy, a spare of the heir locked away in the Centre's storage closet, and Sydney was going to need to convince them how very right they were.

 

******

 

Before investing a lot of time in shaping the boy for a future Sydney hoped he would never have, the psychiatrist fully probed the security limits of the underground bunker they were forced to live in. Perhaps there was a way to get Jarod a message, one which would tell him the location of the ultrasecret facility. There was also the possibility of directly escaping themselves, although the idea of being chased by Miss Parker or her less scrupulous equivalents filled Sydney with dread. He never was one for direct action, when rolling over and playing dead will do.

Sydney reasoned there must be another way out of Donoterase other than the main cargo elevator entrance, which was continuously monitored. The guards had one external viewpoint above the elevator, but it featured a blank field, utterly undistinguished to identify the building's location. Hansen left for the day via the elevator, and some judicious searching of Gemini's DSAs indicated Raines was likely accessing the facility there as well. Surely there must be some emergency exits or ventilation shafts or _something._

He started pumping the four maintenance workers for information, feigning that he was concerned about the possibility of a fire. Out of the small number of people who worked there, they were the likeliest to secretly know how to get out, when push came to shove. But their answers were rather alarming. Absolutely the only man-sized way out was through the elevator shaft. There were plumbing and electrical and data line repair tunnels, of course, but all access points to the surface were welded shut. There were dozens of ventilation shafts but all were too small for a person to crawl through. One maintenance worker sardonically laughed at Sydney's concerns, stating that in the event of a fire, the only course of action was to seal off the room and pray the sprinkler system worked. Rather typical of the Centre, Sydney wryly mused, to prefer to burn down their secrets rather than let them escape.

Phone and internet lines were another possibility of getting word out, but they too were closely guarded. The only phone line was in Hansen's office. The only internet connection was activated through Hansen's command. They sent data in for backup three times a week, and were allowed personal messages at that time, but every byte leaving Donoterase was heavily screened for possible security lapses.

At last Sydney gave up that fruitless quest and focused his efforts on Gemini himself. The boy was highly adept at reading nonverbal signals, so Sydney simply began to feed him cues, louder and louder, to guide him on the more difficult sims. Like tells in a poker game: Back straight for a correct answer, shoulders slumped for moving in the wrong direction. Smiling when he placed himself in the right frame of mind, face neutral when not. A thousand subtle body movements, undoing decades of carefully formulated habits. For it wasn't just Jarod who was trained all those years in the sim lab, but his handler too, a rigorous system of response and feedback to mold a mind into something unique in the human experience.

Sydney often wondered if James consciously knew what his teacher was doing. Actually he was curious about everything that was going on in that head of his, he who looked so much like Jarod and yet obviously was not. But his true mind was hidden behind layers of reticence and performance, and Sydney knew in his heart he was not the fortunate person who would get to find out.

 

******

 

A couple of months in, Sydney finally began to appreciate Jarod's ceaseless childhood complaints about being bored. Truthfully the whining had been an endless source of exasperation at the time. Didn't Sydney spent well over a hundred hours per week directly working with him, at the complete expense of any sort of family or social life? Didn't they feed him infinite libraries worth of books in his off hours, not just for future sims but to keep his mind occupied? But now Sydney began to feel the cold malaise, infecting deep into his bones. The sure knowledge that no matter what, the following day would be the same as today. There were no sick days, no weekends, no mindless errands taking one at least briefly into the sun or rain, no casual small talk with shopkeepers or neighbors. Even though Sydney had never been much for outdoor activities, at least the possibility of it existed before. He could have if he wanted to, but now he was a prisoner. Self-imposed, one he could walk out of at any weekly shift change, but that would mean leaving the child buried alive forever.

He began working on a book, one that had been rattling in his brain for many years but he never had the guts to actually start typing before. It would probably be published posthumously, at the rate things were going in his life. The book was about the Centre of course, how its culture warped everyone in it, bending them all to some demented force beyond any one person's control. He was calling it "The Cult of the Corporation."

Donoterase might get its own case study, for it was a microcosm of the tendency to form small fiefdoms of power in self-defense. Miss Parker did it, Raines did it, Mr. Parker had been doing it for a good half century, and even Sydney had done it on a smaller scale. Here, of course, Hansen had done it. He ruled the place like a benevolent dictator, both shielding everyone in it from the occasional madness at Blue Cove, and controlling its intellectual output as a means to power. Sydney was increasingly sure he was the one who had fed James the literature when he was a small boy. Hansen's control over the facility was on the upswing then, and he surely was aware that Donoterase's prominence rested on this one child's ability to Pretend. If Project Gemini delivered another failure, the whole place could be deemed a failure. And as the Triumvirate liked to maliciously point out, failure was not an option.

Sydney began letting James off with only eight hours of training a day, allowing him to roam free afterward to his preferred activity of helping the scientists with their projects. That was enough time to demonstrate progress, and look like they were working hard to anyone who casually perused the DSAs. It didn't matter to Sydney anymore; the boy's future lay in some hazy undiscovered country that did not involve simulations. His most important output was the weekly progress memo, which he crafted as a work of art, carefully building up James' purported skills without boasting or making it out to be an unrealistically miraculous change in cognition. Sydney compared him favorably to Jarod with detailed examples, going off memory since Jarod's DSAs were denied him. At the eighth report he subtly complained about the lack of facilities and resources at Donoterase, noting that the sim lab at the Centre was superior in every respect. A few weeks more, and he would outright recommend moving Gemini for full-time professional Pretending.

Then Raines decided to drop in a for a visit.

Sydney knew he was overdue in coming, but he hoped to get some warning as a professional courtesy. He should have known Raines would prefer to show off and intimidate. They were working on a difficult emotional problem involving three people and jealousy and envy, a mental minefield for James. Sydney was slowly coaxing him to think of the problem like literature, with human emotions at the core of the story instead of an overanalyzed afterthought. At the crucial point of breakthrough, Raines and his sweeper Willie rolled into the sim lab unannounced.

"Keep going. Don't mind me." Raines rasped, standing only three feet from the terrified young man.

Naturally, James began to panic. Sydney never seen it live before, but had caught and studied a few key incidents off the DSAs in recent years. The boy's mind appeared to go into an anxiety-driven loop, one he had trouble breaking free from once it began. He nervously glanced between the two handlers, trying to decide who was more important to please, unable to speak in more than a stammer.

Sydney placed his hand on James' shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The only saving grace in this situation was that the sim was not one of Jarod's, so Raines would not have a benchmark of how it was "supposed" to go. The real test here for his student was to simply sound convincing.

"Tell me what Ms. Loraine would do again after the revelation. Take a second and focus."

James closed his eyes and huffed in a soft breath. "I feel anger, but also guilt. I think I've caused this betrayal, although it isn't logical. Because I have hurt, I feel I deserve to be hurt in response. So although I am angry, I do not lash out, but collapse from the pain I feel is self-inflicted." He didn't open his eyes during that entire recitation.

"Mindless pablum,' Raines hissed, although he had accepted such answers as exceptional when _he_ was in charge. "Let's see him _become_ an embittered housewife."

Sydney decided to assert some authority, what little he had, if only as a signal to the boy that he no longer had to take orders from the old ghoul. He stepped between them, dangerously close to the oxygen tank, and said, "James is _my_ student now. You may observe, and complain about my methods to the Tower all you like, but you do not have the prerogative to interfere with my simulations."

James' eyes grew huge and horrified at the use of the forbidden name. Raines actually took a step closer to Sydney and wheezed out his outraged words. "HIS ... NAME ... IS NOT ... JAMES."

"It is now," Sydney said mildly. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, seemingly nonchalant at the invasion of his personal space.

Raines, seething, finally retreated to behind the observation window. Sydney took advantage of the interruption to switch to an engineering sim, one that James could perform with confidence. He hadn't done too badly despite Raines' attempts to rattle him. If only he could get him transferred out of Donoterase, Sydney doubted he would have to pretend to Pretend for much longer.

 

******

 

Unfortunately Raines' efforts to sabotage Sydney had some effect, for it was a long four months of absentee wheedling before he saw any movement on his requests to transfer Project Gemini to the Centre. By that time the Triumvirate had gotten involved, an ominous sign. Sydney didn't have access to his normal sources of Centre rumors, but from what little he heard, the search for Jarod was going very badly indeed for both Miss Parker and Lyle. Jarod had gone underground for the past six months, to be with his family Sydney surmised, and if he was doing any charity Pretends he was no longer leaving clues about it to be discovered. As Sydney guessed, this made the Triumvirate even more eager to have a working Pretender at their disposal. Sydney took a calculated risk and sent their African overlords a direct memo outlining Gemini's qualifications, bypassing the Parkers and likely cementing his status as _persona non grata_ once the dust settled. No matter: The Triumvirate agreed with him and ordered the boy be moved at the next shift change, the very next day.

James himself proved to be recalcitrant on the issue, however. Sydney knew it would be difficult for him to say goodbye to everyone with so little warning. But another unexpected issue popped up. Something about the rhesus clones he was so attached to.

 _"Please,_ Dr. Sydney, let me go next week. They just found the tumor yesterday, there isn't time to set up the microarray for living tissue before the shift change, and someone's got to dissolve the para, so Dr. Randall's going to do the necropsy on blue week. Please, I have to be there for it." He was talking a mile a minute and said _Doctor_ Sydney again, a sure sign of how distraught he was.

"Your job is not to be the pathologist, James. Tell me why this is so important to you."

"Bertha's my _friend._ It's the end,I owe it to her to be there at the end. To say goodbye." James looked like he was about to burst into tears, the closest to an emotional breakdown Sydney had seen yet.

 _To say goodbye._ While they diced the poor animal up for tissue specimens. This must be the only sort of afterlife the boy knew, the scientific version where everyone donated their body and brain for the sake of knowledge, even unto the bitter end. For some reason Sydney was suddenly sure James knew he was a clone, knew and accepted it as commonplace despite the surreal nature of his short life.

"Let's go see Dr. Hansen," Sydney said slowly. There were only sixteen hours left before they had to leave, never to return.

In the end the red week vet, Dr. Letty, and several other technicians decided to stay on an extra week so James could assist with the euthanasia. They powered through the night doing the necessary prep work, and James was able to give her a final peanut before administering the sedating injection. Sydney came and retrieved him from the pathology room only a half hour before the transport was due in, and he made a mad dash around the cargo bay hugging everyone, still smelling of paraformaldehyde.


	4. "For the good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts ..."

It felt like a furnace inside the plastic sphere, which was part of the point. A fire inside a space capsule, loss of orbit, that was the scenario James had been given for the demonstration sim. Dr. Sydney had promised it would be an easy one to exhibit his skills, and indeed it was. The solution popped into his head the instant Sydney explained the parameters of the problem, so the only thing left to figure out was how long he should dither before pretending the answer had come to him. Sydney had mentioned that "it will be fine if you have some uncertainty; consider the situation, don't jump to conclusions right away." James took that to mean the donor hadn't seen the answer right away, so he feigned some distress for minute or so until Sydney's exhortations grew to a certain level, then revealed the answer. His acting had improved under Dr. Sydney's tutelage, no doubt about it.

James still wasn't sure what the _point_ of all that acting was, however. For as long as he could remember they had asked him to run simulations, and every time it still seemed pointless. If he didn't see the solution immediately, or at least see the colors leading him on a path towards a solution, then no amount of pretending would glean that information from thin air. In fact the whole enterprise increasingly struck him as unscientific and superstitious, a method of inquiry no more reliable or replicable than reading tea leaves, which he read about in a book once. It was strange, because Sydney clearly knew all about the scientific method, and yet he too spent all his energy training James to Pretend. It was as if he was really training for some Shakespearean-like play, one for which he had to make up the script as he went along.

As Dr. Sydney laid out the sim for him, he wondered what would happen if he simply blurted out the correct answer. What would happen if he told them he didn't need to act it out see the solution, and asked to work on the sort of problems he was actually good at? Before Sydney, with Mr. Raines, that thought never would have occurred to him. There was only obedience and avoidance of punishment with Mr. Raines, and James always did as exactly he was told. Sydney had tempered that unthinking obedience, trying to teach him that he could have actionable opinions about the world, and it was only natural he that he began to apply those skills in observation of the adults around him. But Mr. Raines was here watching him, and a few other new people whose faces were a little blurry in the distance of this huge room, and Sydney himself moved and spoke more quickly as if nervousness was expanding in pressure within him like a balloon. Now was not the time to test the boundaries of the simulations.

After he finished, everyone including Mr. Raines seemed pleased. He must have done well, because they didn't ask him to run another one. Instead they began arguing about something: He could hear a woman's voice, strident, Sydney's soft voice calming her down, a clipped manipulative voice riling her up again. He would have liked to stay and listen, watch their colors and try and interpret the situation, but the sweepers came and took him back to his barren cell instead.

He was finally here, at this mysterious Centre people sometimes whispered about, and then cut off if they thought he was listening. Sydney had warned him that he was leaving Donoterase, and had heavily implied he was going somewhere better, that the new living situation would be a vast improvement over the lonely antiseptic halls of the old. So far his initial impression of the Centre was that it was dreary and horrible. The walls themselves seemed to have a blackness to them, and he couldn't tell whether it was the colors assaulting his brain from his gloomy mood or the real physical features of the place.

The ride over should have been a clue, but he was too excited to note the signs. James had been exhausted from staying up all night working on Bertha's necropsy, but Mac had slipped him a paper cup of thick coffee so that energized him for the morning. Both the red and blue shifts were there at the turnover, some coming and some going, so he bade goodbye to the ingoing blue week first. There were some new sweepers too, apparently to ensure he didn't try to escape during the transition. It was ridiculous; where would he go? During the ride the red week crew came up to him one by one, despite the glaring of the sweepers, and wished him luck. Some people even expressed condolences for Bertha, although he didn't know why, or how to respond. She was sick a with a terminal disease that would cause increasing pain and discomfort, so it was time for euthanasia. He would miss her, but he would miss all the other animals and people too, and they weren't dead yet.

The elevator and traveling vehicles made him feel nauseous, as if the world itself were shaking. That may have just been nervousness. He had never been inside anything that moved before. James hoped he could see sunlight, or clouds, or the moon, any of the things outside that he always had to imagine, but the trucks were sealed tight with only a dim brownish light. Everyone's colors all looked strange in the weird light, muted, but in retrospect that may have been due to mental state of everyone in the truck. They were all going home, but they knew James was going ... elsewhere.

When the truck door opened a waft of fresh brisk air blew in, an unfamiliar fishy smell tinging his nostrils. On some ancient instinct he knew that it was the sea. Outside the truck he hoped to see the long-imagined shoreline, but all that was visible was an open cargo bay door. Through the door he could see a blur of green that could be forest, and an enticing light, swirls of orange and pink and yellow yet still the brightest light he had ever laid eyes on. Sunrise. Without thinking about it James took a step towards the opening, just to get a better look at the lovely colors, but two of his guards stepping in front of him to menacingly prevent him from inching any closer.

The red shift crew all silently filed to some unseen back door without another glance at him, and Sydney gently touched his arm to direct his attention. Mr. Raines was wheeling up with yet more sweepers.

"Gemini. Come with me." For an instant James was terrified he was back in Mr. Raines domain, but Sydney followed them too. The exact chain of authority was unclear; he needed to pay attention and obey.

The head sweeper led them through an incomprehensibly big building, twisting corridors and an another stomach-churning long elevator. Sydney trailed with Mr. Raines, arguing for the two of them to have the day off. James listened intently, trying to extract everything he could from the conversation.

"I haven't been allowed home in six months. And the boy was up all night assisting with one last experiment for Hansen. Surely the demonstration sim can wait a day while we all have time to adjust to our new surroundings," Sydney was saying.

"No," Mr. Raines wheezed in response. "Due to the events at Pakor, the time table for this project has been moved up. The Triumvirate no longer believes Gemini is secure."

Pakor? Pakor was the back-up storage facility for tissue samples, and one of the in vitro labs external to Donoterase. James couldn't imagine what could have gone on there that had anything to do with his security.

"When is the final move scheduled?"

"The day after tomorrow. We expect your full cooperation, Sydney. Mutumbo is pleased with your progress. You can continue working with him in Africa. Parker wants a live demonstration this afternoon."

 _Africa?_ Apparently he wasn't going to be at the Centre long. James' sense of geography was hazy, but even he knew the continent of Africa was a long distance from the North American east coast. At least Dr. Sydney was coming too, and maybe not Mr. Raines. That had to be good news.

Then they locked him in his room for the morning, and the lonely horror of his situation began to dawn on him. There was no one here to meet, no materials to read, no data to be analyzed, nothing to do but stare at the blank walls and the blinking red lights of the cameras.

James was no stranger to isolation. When he was younger and Mr. Raines exerted more direct control over his daily life, they often left him alone with only books to keep him company. He had tutors when he was a baby, but by the time he was seven he was expected to teach himself all relevant information for the sims. Over the years Hansen let him out more and more when his handlers weren't there. At first it was under the guise of needing assistance with this project or that, but soon it became an entire parallel life, one when Mr. Raines was present and one when he was not. He didn't have a family, but at least there were people to talk to, and problems to solve that kept his mind busy and bolster his confidence after many anxious failures at simulations. James wasn't under any illusions that anyone who worked at Donoterase loved him, but he could secretly care for them in his heart, a little bit.

After the brief demonstration the sweepers led him back to the same cell without so much as a boring journal article to keep him occupied. There James' mind began to spin around his predicament, sucking faster and faster in a downward into an emotional vortex. Being at the Centre was like being six years old again, when he was under the constant surveillance of tutors and sweepers and the malevolent figure whose colors oozed black, for bodily illness and for corruption. It wasn't what he expected. Somehow he had gotten it into his head that there would be other Pretenders at the Centre, the older ones maybe that had already been trained. He thought he was about to join an adult community, but it was looking like he was the only one. Perhaps the donor had been a singularity, the Centre's pet freak of nature, and now that he was gone they needed a replacement. Which meant he was going to have to keep up this dismal charade for the rest of his life, trying to be a copy of someone he had never met and knew nothing about. Except of course that his mind was like a chameleon, and James' was not.

James could feel his walls falling, and hated himself for what would inevitably happen next. Hated the weakness, the loss of control. He had the presence of mind to glance around and identify a spot next to a table where he would be mostly hidden from the cameras. At least the proof of his shattering incompetence wouldn't be recorded for posterity, or for Mr. Raines to torture him with later. He sat on the floor and put his head on his aching knees, and the tears began to fall. Over his defective mind and body, over the loneliness which would never be ameliorated by friends or loved ones, over his listless gray future doing something he was beginning to detest to the very depths of his soul.

It was in this frame of mind that the beautiful lady walked into the room.

James heard someone come in and his heart seized in terror, for there was no way to hide the fact that he had been crying. No one shouted at him right off, so he took a couple of seconds to pull himself together while the visitor looked around for him.

"I'm over here," James said as he stood up. "Do you want me to do something for you?" But then his voice trailed off as he really focused on her. The woman's colors jumped out at him, a huge fire of red with sharp ridges of blue. The chroma were influenced by her necklace and eyes, but it was more than that; her personality could leap out and strangle a person from across the room. Then he looked more closely at her face, and realized he recognized it. It was the same face Sydney had showed him in the photograph all the way back in week 20. Only like Sydney's twin, it was not the same person at all, but her daughter.

James was so distracted absorbing all of this that he almost failed to notice the beautiful lady was staring back at him, with the same shock of recognition he saw from Dr. Sydney and Mr. Raines. "No," she said finally. "I just want to talk to you." She motioned for him to sit next to her on the cot.

"You knew ..." he almost blurted out _the_ _donor_ but remembered himself at the last second. "... Dr. Sydney?"

She laughed, and it didn't sound at all like he would have guessed. Her voice was lower, richer than her tiny frame would suggest. "Yes, I definitely know Syd. Grew up around him, in fact. He's been teaching you?"

"For the past 27 weeks." That reminded him of simulations, and he realized that must be what she was here for. "Do you need me to work on a sim?" Even to himself, the words sounded hesitant.

Her mouth cricked up again in amusement. "You sound thrilled at the prospect. Do you _like_ running simulations?"

No one had ever asked him that before. Not a single person. "I'm supposed to," he said softly. "But I'd rather do ... do ..." At that moment he couldn't articulate what other possibilities existed. The words _anything else_ formed in his head, but it seemed so selfish put baldly like that. The simulations were supposed to help people, shouldn't that be his goal?

"Do you want to do what the other kids do?"

"What do other kids do?" He had so little frame of reference, other than the abstract knowledge that educational institutions existed. Huckleberry Finn floating down the river? Jem, Dill and Scout running the in the woods all summer, with an ungraspable lack of supervision? Those stories were from a more primitive age. James hardly knew what summer was.

"Play. Laugh. Make friends. Talk. Maybe meet a girl if you're having a good day. Live your life." James didn't know what to say. It was about as realistic as traveling to the moon. The beautiful lady wrapped her arms around his shoulders, bringing him in for an embrace. A wave of relaxation flowed over him, and he resisted the urge to nestle his head on her shoulder like a small child. "You know, when I was your age, I knew someone like you. _Exactly_ like you. He complained about how boring the sims were, and we had this same conversation."

"What did you tell him?" Her colors floated in front of the two of them as she spoke of the donor, swirls of anger and regret and frustration bobbing in the sea of gorgeous red.

"That he would need to leave the Centre if he wanted to really live."

"Did he?" James whispered. She glanced at him sharply, her chroma illusions shifting yet again. They both knew what the exchange was really about.

"Eventually. Maybe we can do better with you." She stood up, intending to leave. "Syd says you call yourself James? Come with me then, James."

 _"Gemini_ isn't going anywhere with you." Mr. Raines stood at the doorway with his favorite sweeper and -- devastatingly -- Sydney right next to him. "He belongs to the Triumvirate, and we will deliver their Pretender in one piece, without your interference."

The moment of promise was shattered. The beautiful lady was lower in the hierarchy than Mr. Raines, and escape was just a fantasy of hers. Someone else already owned him, and there would be no life beyond the simulations. There was no point in hoping that tomorrow would bring anything fundamentally different from yesterday. His psyche was sliding to the gray, towards no colors and no personality, acquiescing to Mr. Raines at last. Gemini did his best to forget the enticing words as soon as she left the room, leaving him alone again.

 

******

 

Very early the next morning, year 8 blue week 47 day 2, sweepers woke up Gemini and hustled him to get dressed to leave. They were transporting him a day earlier than he expected, but he no longer questioned any of their demands, even in the privacy of his mind. Dr. Sydney was going with him at least, a tiny consolation. They raced down the maze of hallways again back to a similar loading dock as the previous morning, only a group of long black cars awaited them this time.

The brown-tinted windows obscured the rising sun again, but this time there was still enough light for him to glimpse a distorted view of the outside as the vehicles began to move. Neither the moon nor clouds were visible, but he could make out trees and buildings and at one point the he thought caught an image of the beach. Even the rocks were interesting, their textures unique to his experience, their colors lifelessly soothing. The caravan was passing by a particularly fascinating rock cut through a hillside when the cars unexpectedly rolled to a stop. Some sort of accident ahead. Despite his melancholy mood he craned his head to get a look. Dr. Sydney sat serene next to him.

Without warning car doors opened, smoke was everywhere, shots fired. He saw three assailants: a younger brown-haired one gassing the lead cars surrounded by a maelstrom of colors, _every_ color in the never-glimpsed rainbow; a distracting flank maintained by a skinny red-haired woman with flaming orange colors wearing a gas mask; and a older man that was obviously their father. As the silver-haired man reached their car, Sydney leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Go with Jarod."

It was the first time he'd ever heard the name.

The man tossed the tear gas into the car as Sydney practically shoved James over his lap out the door. There his vision seemed to explode in the brightness, his first exposure to the overwhelming luminosity of full sunlight. The man yanked him blindly towards another vehicle when he heard yet another car screeching to a stop near the caravan. James' eyes began to adjust, not sufficient to make out blurry faces in the distance, but enough that everyone's colors were visible again, brighter than he ever imagined possible. He saw the unmistakable shimmering ruby of the beautiful lady get out of the new car. Her attention was divided between the younger man and James himself -- not himself, he realized, the older man next to him. She hated him, for some reason, and both loved and hated his son.

James could see some of the red flipping to black as she tried to make up her mind. She gazed at him with a weariness, as if her entire life had pushed her to this phantom tipping point. In that instant, he saw her decide to let him go, and take back the donor in his stead. He wanted to tell her no, don't do it, that he was fine with living in the gray if it meant his twin and progenitor got to live his life with that rainbow. But she raised her gun and shot anyway.

The bullet penetrated the right upper thigh, and although James's sight was still wonky he could tell it wasn't a flesh wound. The donor's femur shattered and gave way underneath him, and as he went down James saw the rainbow crumple down to black, like a star collapsing in on itself. His grandfather shouted and wrenched them both into a nearby truck. _I was wrong_ , James thought absurdly. _Tomorrow really might be different than yesterday._ Then his mind too sent him back to the comforting oblivion of night.


End file.
